Toys R Us, the iconic retailer of our childhood, filed for bankruptcy this month, citing a lack of traffic to their brick-and-mortar stores as one of the reasons why the business has been on a slow downward spiral. Their lackluster online store and their inability to compete with online retail giants like Amazon proves that having a customer-facing storefront is no longer enough to bring consistent business through the door. If you own a brick-and-mortar business that sells goods, it’s time to seriously consider taking your shop online.

Are you an expert-level crafter who is taking Etsy by a storm? Or a pro thrifter who sells your coolest finds on eBay? If this sounds like you, this is your wakeup call—why not turn your online shop into a small business?

Have an online store? There are a ton of New Domains out there that are perfect for advertising and selling your online merchandise. Check out some of our favorite extensions that work well with eCommerce websites.

You no longer have to be a website developer or coding junkie to create your own website. There are tons of options available for creating high quality sites without knowing the ins and outs of CSS and HTML. One of the best options available for the price is Name.com’s Website Builder, which comes with a variety of perks.

One of the most widely anticipated New Domains has reached General Availability and is now available for anyone to register. The .SHOP domain has finally hit the market, and is showing signs of being enormously successful.

Etsy is an awesome way for sellers around the world to sell their custom goods to an eager audience of buyers. But marketing your Etsy store can be difficult without a simple way to direct your customers to your web store. An easy solution for this problem is forwarding a custom domain name to your Etsy store. The process is much simpler than it sounds and is a quick, affordable way to give your Etsy store a more professional look.

You may have noticed during your various online escapades that the ever familiar HTTP in front of a domain name occasionally turns into the less familiar HTTPS. Depending on your browser, this may also be accompanied by a color change in the address bar to green, a lock symbol, or other signs that make the URL field look different from what you’re used to. What does it mean? Does it really make a difference?

Etsy recently announced a big change that’s going to help its user base of online sellers brand their eCommerce stores more effectively. Pattern by Etsy, a website building tool geared toward eCommerce, now allows artists, crafters, and other Etsy sellers to conduct their businesses through custom domain names and websites.

Remember when everyone started using online storefronts and the older generation was all, “Those crazy kids with these crazy electronic stores. Whatever happened to selling door to door, or in the market?” Of course you don’t – that was like a bazillion years ago. And besides, those people have been proven dead wrong.

The average U.S. consumer spends over $1,000 a year online, and that number is expected to increase by 44% in the next three years, 71% of shoppers believe they’ll get a better deal online than in stores, and in the next few years, mobile shopping is expected to count for $64 billion of revenue in the U.S. alone (according to a 2012 eMarketer report).

Bottom line: It’s time to start your e-commerce site, open an online front for your brick and mortar business, or max-out your e-commerce storefront with blogs, product pages, and sales tabs. If you’re looking for affordable new domains in the next year, consider some of the new gTLDs that are coming your way – you’ll be able to get short, memorable domain names with industry-specific extensions at landrush prices, and some of the nTLDs are specifically tailored for e-commerce.

Here’s a couple nTLD suggestions that would be perfect for e-commerce:

.SHOP: When you’re looking for a good, searchable domain name, one of the rules is to stick with highly searchable keyword terms. What if you could put one of those terms in your domain name without compromising length, or the name of your company? That’s what a .SHOP domain can offer you, as an e-commerce owner. You’ll be able to have access to a virtual name space for shopping, and acquire a domain name that says, “You can shop here.”

.BUY: Just like .SHOP, .BUY creates a generic-term domain name that both adds a searchable keyword to your extension and signals to potential customers what business sector you belong to. .BUY and .SHOP are slotted to be industry-wide nTLDs that offer a unique name space for retailers, all over the world, who sell their merchandise online.

.PROMO: Promos make the e-commerce world go around. Conversion rates increase during promotional periods, especially when promoting on social networks. Get a unique domain name specifically for your promotions page with .PROMO. Because it’s a new top level domain, you’ll be able to register your trademark during the sunrise period and secure yourcompany.promo for use during all of your future promotions. .PROMO is easily-identifiable to your customers and allows you to develop a specific site extension for the purpose of promotion.

.COUPONS/.DEALS/.DISCOUNT: Who doesn’t love a bargain? For real. If you know anyone who hates bargains, have them contact us so we can interview them for the blog because they would be a true anomaly. Having a page on your e-commerce site specific to savings allows your customers to go straight to the “bargain bin,” so to speak, if they’re shopping on a budget. Anytime you can make your site easier to navigate, conversion rates increase. These extensions offer a way to use your company name and a savings-centered extension to promote your deals, discounts, and coupons. Adding pages also increases inbound links, which helps SEO.

.ECOM: It doesn’t really get more industry specific than .ECOM. While you might be able to find nTLDs that cater to the industry you sell in, such as .SHOES, .CAR, and .BIKE, .ECOM is a perfect domain for any e-commercial business that doesn’t fit into a generic term category, or for any e-commercial business that sells products and services meant to increase other e-com sites, such as hosting services, analytics, shopping carts, purchasing services, affiliate marketing, social media enhancement, etc. .ECOM serves many different purposes, but stays specific to e-commerce.

Check out our complete list of nTLDs, including a retail-specific category. Also sign up to watch your favorite nTLDs, so you know when landrush and sunrise periods start, by using our watcher.